Reporting from DevConnections / SharePoint Connections: SharePoint keynote + new MOSS Search product
The conference got underway this morning. Thousands of IT professionals resplendent in their Windows Mobile baseball caps, and free promotional t-shirts, all wearing different coloured backpacks to indicate which Connections track they were on flocked into the Mandalay Bay Convention centre. With an 08:00hr start many were bleary eyed following an evening of excess in the City of Lights.
I started the day with the SharePoint keynote speech entitled "Driving the business with SharePoint" and presented by Tom Rizzo, Microsoft SharePoint Director.
As the room filled up and we waited to begin the session Tom warmed the crowd up with a few "show of hands" questions. Most of the 1000+ strong audience raised their hands when asked who had deployed WSS V3, there was a similar response when asked about MOSS 07, but interestingly there were very few who responded when asked, "Who has used MOSS for their public facing Web site." Perhaps only a dozen or so. Maybe this is just a quirk of the American market.
Much of the presentation was update on material we have heard before at other events such as the SharePoint Conference in Berlin last February. Some points of note:
- 85 million licenses MOSS licenses worldwide
- 17k customers worldwide
- Microsoft’s SharePoint revenues have now exceeded $800 million and is heading for the billion dollar mark
- Many Fortune 500 companies have adopted the technology, especially for Web sites
- Microsoft have 325k portals, sites, and sub sites on their implementation with a Database size of 15TB
I am always interested in peoples attempts to give a short answer the question "What is SharePoint?", and Tom gave two:
- "A business productivity server"
- "A middle tier Operating System"
My preferred answer is, "SharePoint is Microsoft’s Information Worker platform".
The big announcement was one which many of you may already have picked up on the wires regarding the new product MS Search Server 2008. Currently in Beta and due for release in the first half of 2008 this product will replace the Search only license version of MOSS already available, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Enterprise Search.
The new product is, "an updated and rebranded" version of the MOSS Search product. Key investment areas were listed as:
- Simplified install with a "three click" server preparation
- Enhanced Administration
- New federation capabilities based on the OpenSearch standard
- Performance and scalability enhancements
- No preset document limits
We were treated to a quick demo and some screen shots. The federated search looks good, this enables Search Server to send the users query to a variety of external search providers including public providers such as Wikipedia and MSN Live, and internal providers such as SQL Server. All handled through a handy dandy web part.
There will be two versions of the product:
- MS Search Server 2008
- MS Search Server Express 2008
The only difference between the two is that the Express version will be limited to a single server deployment. Users of the current MOSS for Enterprise Search will receive an update early next year.
Time to head back for the afternoon sessions. Now where did I put my baseball cap and backpack????
S:)